


I'd Come As Often As I Could

by stardust_in_the_wind



Category: Fortnite (Video Game), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Apocalypse, Canon Compliant, Developing Relationship, F/F, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Forbidden Love, Fortnite Ch2S3, Fortnite Ch2S4, Friends to Lovers, Ghost (Fortnite), Girls with Guns, Guns, Happy Ending, Midas is Jules's Dad, Midas's A+ Parenting, Minor Character Death, Minor Violence, Shadow (Fortnite), Sharks, The Agency (Fortnite), The Authority (Fortnite), The Fortilla (Fortnite), Thor's Arrival on Fortnite Island
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-21
Updated: 2020-09-21
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:15:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26575867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardust_in_the_wind/pseuds/stardust_in_the_wind
Summary: Jules looked up from her equipment, an amused smile on her face. “Are you… talking to the shark?”“Shh, maybe he can understand us!” Ocean grinned and moved her hands over where the shark’s ears would be.“I’m pretty sure he can’t. Even I’m not that good,” Jules responded. “Although he might be more intelligent now.”“So what I’m hearing is a solid maybe. Either way he needs a name.”“What do you name a genetically modified shark, anyway?”Ocean thought for a moment. “Tony,” she declared.Jules snorted. “Sure. Tony Shark.”
Relationships: Jules/Ocean (Fortnite)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 10





	I'd Come As Often As I Could

**Author's Note:**

> Please note I know nothing about:  
> -electronics or robotics  
> -genetic engineering  
> -shark biology  
> -flood safety  
> -gunfights

Being the daughter of an agent made for a lonely childhood. Midas vetted every person Jules associated with (which was a depressingly small number), and generally made a normal childhood pretty much impossible. Most people avoided her since they didn’t want to be on Midas’s radar. She didn’t exactly blame them. Jules had her books and her circuit boards, and that was enough. 

Not even Midas wanted to spend time with Jules. He’d needed a protegé; that was the only reason he adopted a child. To Midas, Jules was the next generation of Ghost, and that was all. He provided what she needed, and praised her when she proved somehow useful. He usually remembered her birthday, and that was enough. 

The next generation of Ghost still had to go to school, though. Midas definitely didn’t have the time (or skills) to homeschool her, and there was only so much she could do on her own. The first day had been nerve-wracking, but passed without incident. Jules kept to herself, mostly, and got good grades, and that was enough. Then Jules reached high school, and it wasn’t. 

“Hey, can you pass me that battery?” The girl tilted her head towards it, both hands occupied with some sort of device. Jules had never seen her before; she must have been new. That probably also explained why she was voluntarily talking to Jules. She wordlessly handed it over. “Thanks!”

“What does it do?”

“This?” The girl fiddled with some wires. “It’s meant to go through an obstacle course without crashing into anything.”

“Oh, you’re taking the robotics class.”

“Yeah, but it’s not exactly going great. I’ve been trying to get this to work for two hours.”

Jules hesitated. She wasn’t supposed to be talking to anyone, let alone an unknown. But... this girl had no idea who she was, and treated her like anyone else. Jules wanted more, even if it would only be for a few minutes. The girl would probably regret it the second she found out Jules was Midas’s daughter. But for the moment, Jules was just another student.

“What seems to be the problem?”

“So here’s the thing. I don’t exactly… know?” The girl laughed nervously. “I mean, I’ve followed the instructions as best I can, but every time I put the robot in, it just knocks right into the first wall.”

“Can I see inside?” Jules asked, stepping closer. 

“Yeah, sure.” She moved to the side, letting Jules get a close look at the robot’s innards. One of the wires was only partially connected – a small mistake, but one that would definitely prevent the robot from functioning properly. Jules pointed it out to the girl before moving it into the correct position.

“Alright, let’s try it now.” They watched with bated breath as the robot slowly made its way through the course, avoiding each wall. 

“Oh my God, thank you so much!” the girl exclaimed. 

Jules grinned. “No problem at all.”

“My name’s Ocean, what’s yours?”

“Jules,” she responded, bracing herself for the negative reaction sure to come.

“Oh, _you’re_ Jules?” Ocean asked incredulously, but she didn’t look scared.

“Um. Yes?”

“My mom, she works for Midas, mentioned once that you were around my age, but I didn’t realize you’d be going to, you know, _school_.”

Despite herself, Jules laughed. “Yeah, unfortunately I still have to learn English and math, not just super secret agent skills.”

*****

Midas looked a bit more than faintly surprised when Jules asked if she could have someone over. She hadn’t requested that since kindergarten, when the person in question hadn’t passed through his extensive vetting process. Jules had cried, and Midas immediately sent her to her room. 

“Her name is Ocean, she said her mother works for you. If that’s true, she’d have no connection to Shadow.”

Midas hummed thoughtfully. “I’ll have to verify that what she says is true.” He tapped at his phone. The wait felt interminable, but finally he looked up. “It seems to be fine. She can visit after school, but you know the rules. My office is off limits.” 

Midas’s office was a tiny room in the basement that Jules had never been allowed to enter. He spent most weekends there, working on whatever he did as an agent. She’d once asked what he was doing in there, only for him to angrily slam the door in her face and later punish her for distracting him. 

*****

“So, this is it,” Jules announced, leading Ocean into her lab with an awkward sweep of her arms. 

“Whoa, this is _huge_. You built all this stuff?”

Jules smiled despite herself. “Yeah.” Kit blinked at them from his corner, and Jules waved at him. 

“Aww, he’s so cute! What’s his name?” Ocean asked, moving towards him. 

“Wait, be-” Kit growled and activated his mech with a loud rumble. Ocean jumped back. “... careful,” Jules trailed off. “His name is Kit. He doesn’t like new people very much.”

“Yeah, I see that,” Ocean laughed nervously. “So, uh… what are you working on?”

Jules motioned to a large monitor. “Genetic engineering. I’m trying to figure out how to enhance something living without adding mech to it.”

“Wow, that’s really cool! Have you been working with plants or something like that?”

“No, fish mostly. The issue is that they die pretty quickly. But when you eat them they’ve got these really interesting healing properties. There was even one that gave you an energy boost,” Jules explained, eyes lit up. 

“Did you _eat_ your experiments?” Ocean asked worriedly.

“ _No_ , who do you take me for? Kit got into them. Now I use a different lock on the tank, though, don’t worry.”

“Wouldn’t want you to accidentally poison yourself there.”

“Aw, you do care!” Jules exclaimed. 

*****

The water blazed pink and orange with the reflection of the sunset. Ocean and Jules sat on a blanket on a rocky beach, overlooking a cluster of small islands. 

“If I were building an agency, I’d put it here,” Ocean muses. “It’d be really hard to invade, for one thing, they’d need to have a boat or be a really good swimmer. And I like being near the water.”

Jules laughed. “Well, whoever named you got one thing right.”

“Yeah, I guess they did.”

“You know, we’re almost twenty,” said Jules. “You could actually do it, in a few months.”

Ocean considered that for a moment. “You’re right, I should start working on an application.”

“And it would be a really nice strategic location too, since you’d be able to spot people approaching from really far off,” Jules continued.

“Yeah, and it’s close enough to the original Ghost agency that you could come visit me sometime.”

“Of course, I’d come as often as I could.”

*****

“Jules, you need to get here quick,” Ocean’s panicked voice filtered through the tinny phone speakers. “There’s a shark and it’s dying and I think you might be able to save it.”

“Okay, where are you?”

“The spot where I said I would put an agency. Jules, it’s losing blood fast.”

“I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

Jules hung up and hastily threw whatever equipment was easily portable into a bag before taking off running. Midas was in his office and didn’t even notice her leaving. 

Ocean was standing over the shark, which lay motionless on darkly stained rocks, half in and half out of the water. “Is it still alive?” Jules asked, breathing hard. 

“Yeah, but not for much longer. I tried stopping the bleeding with bandages but I ran out pretty quick.”

“Shit, okay, here’s more,” Jules said, handing Ocean another med kit. “I can’t do much right now, but I’ll stabilize it and we can go get more stuff from the lab.” They quickly went to work. The shark was soon stable, but still unconscious. 

“What else do we need?” Ocean asked. 

“I’ll need to go to the lab and dismantle some things to bring them here. Can you find a power source?” Ocean nodded. “Great, I’ll be back in a half hour.”

Jules arrived back to see Ocean had found some kind of miniature generator. They set up the equipment together as they’d done many times before in the lab. “I really hope the coding for fish works for a shark, we don’t have time to write new stuff,” Jules said. 

“I think it’ll be fine? It’s either this or it dies, so we should do it. Nothing to lose.”

“Good point. Alright, here goes.” She fired up the machinery and began working. The shark lay still at first, but quickly began thrashing, tearing off all the bandages. 

“Shh, it’s okay, you’re gonna be fine,” Ocean muttered reassuringly, rubbing the side of the shark’s body until it calmed down. She kept up a steady stream of comforting words until Jules was at last finished. 

The shark’s wounds had largely closed over, leaving smooth gray skin that… shone purple. That was a new side effect. At least it didn’t seem overtly harmful. “I’m just gonna do some quick readings, then we can set him free.”

“Okay,” Ocean said, breathing a sigh of relief. “I can’t believe we did it.”

“I know!” Jules finally let her worry give way to excitement. “I wasn’t sure it would work on something so big. That’s why I’m taking these readings.”

Ocean moved to sit next to the shark. “Hey there.” The shark gently nudged its head into her hand. “You’re welcome, any time.”

Jules looked up from her equipment, an amused smile on her face. “Are you… talking to the shark?”

“Shh, maybe he can understand us!” Ocean grinned and moved her hands over where the shark’s ears would be.

“I’m pretty sure he can’t. Even I’m not _that_ good,” Jules responded. “Although he might be more intelligent now.”

“So what I’m hearing is a solid _maybe_. Either way he needs a name.”

“What do you name a genetically modified shark, anyway?”

Ocean thought for a moment. “Tony,” she declared. 

Jules snorted. “Sure. Tony Shark.”

*****

_Jules-_

_I can’t make it to our weekly dinner tonight. Work meeting. Apologies._

_-Midas_

Jules took the note off the fridge, crumpled it up, and threw it out. This happened more and more lately, which Jules was more than fine with. She grabbed some food to take to her room and set off down the hall. 

Midas’s office door was open.

Jules stopped and stared at it for a moment. He never left it open. Before she could think better of it, she went in. 

The office actually seemed fairly normal at first glance. There was an imposing black desk piled high with papers, and a swivel chair. The only thing out of place was the machine, almost as big as the desk. It was nothing Jules had ever seen before. Perched on top was a thick folder marked “Top Secret”. Naturally she went for that first. 

_PRIORITY ONE – DOOMSDAY DEVICE_

_PLANNED LAUNCH DATE –_

She slammed the folder shut. A doomsday weapon? Why would Midas want to destroy the island? She scanned through the folders’ contents. Schematics mostly, no reason why Ghost wanted to bring about the apocalypse. No plans to evacuate anyone. And the launch date was within a week.

Jules couldn’t just take apart the machine – Midas would instantly know it had been her. No, she’d have to hack into it more subtly, make it look like it was working when it really wasn’t. She pored over the information in the folder and slowly began making changes to the machine. 

Two hours later, Jules startled when she heard Midas’s footsteps upstairs. She wasn’t finished, but she couldn’t stay in the office. She couldn’t warn anyone for fear of Midas getting to know what she’d done. She hoped that the changes she’d made would be enough.

*****

“Jules. Go to your room, and don’t come out until I tell you.”

Was Midas planning to launch the weapon with them both still on the island? Was this some kind of suicide attempt? Jules desperately wanted to know what the fuck he was doing, but of course she couldn’t ask.

An ear-splitting siren began wailing almost as soon as Jules shut her door. _Please, please, don’t let it work_. She wouldn’t let herself relax until Midas accepted that the weapon had failed. For twenty agonizing minutes, she waited, and nothing happened. Then a crab hit her window. 

The Agency was nowhere near any water source except the moat, and the moat was so toxic that nothing could possibly be living in it. Which meant... the island was flooding. Jules watched in horror as Salty Springs was engulfed by a tidal wave. The weapon hadn’t worked as Midas intended, but not the way Jules had tried to make it either.

The wave was fast approaching the Agency. Jules pried open her window, thanking her lucky stars Ocean had taught her how to swim, and jumped into the water outside. She swam towards the highest mountain she could see and scrambled up the rocky face, along with most of the residents of Lazy Lake. She felt sick. She could have prevented this. 

“Oh my God, Jules, are you okay?” Ocean ran up to her. 

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Jules lied. “Are you?”

“Yeah.” 

They watched wordlessly as torrents of water swept over the buildings of the island. Fish and seaweed swirled through the flood, carried by the force of the water. A shark even swam by at one point, gleaming purple in the sunlight. 

“Is that…” began Ocean.

“Yes, it’s Tony Shark. I hope he doesn’t try to eat anyone.”

“God, I hope so too.”

Tony Shark was moving towards the front of the Agency, just as the doors burst open. Midas raced towards the mountain. He was soaked through and his swim strokes were rudimentary at best. He didn’t stand a chance. 

“Don’t look, Jules.” Ocean put a hand on her shoulder. 

“No, I have to. He… he did this. I don’t care if he gets eaten.”

“Midas did this?” Ocean demanded. 

“He built a doomsday weapon, I tried to hack it secretly so it wouldn’t work but…” she gestured at the carnage. Tony Shark had Midas between his jaws, and he screamed in terror. The water around him was stained gold. 

“Hey, this isn’t your fault, Jules, it’s on Midas. He’s the one who tried to destroy the island, not you.”

“I know, but…” Jules stared at the ground. “I could’ve stopped it.”

“You did your best. At least this will leave survivors; you’ve saved a bunch of people.”

“I have to fix this. I can be a better agent than him. But not with Ghost.”

“Wait, you’re going to leave Ghost? Are you going to start your own agency?”

“No. I don’t have time to recruit people and build a new organization. I’m joining Shadow,” Jules declared. 

“Jules, think about what you’re saying! Shadow is our rival. You’d have to leave everything behind.” _Including me_ , she didn’t say. 

“We’ll still be able to see each other. I know how to get around surveillance. And I don’t particularly care about much else from Ghost.”

Ocean sighed. “If you’re sure about this, I can’t stop you.”

*****

The Authority was Jules’s pride and joy. Kit had his own domain now – Catty Corner. Jules had only one regret about joining Shadow. She would never be able to see Ocean’s agency, the Fortilla. Ocean had built it right where she said she would, on the small islands near the beach where they’d saved Tony Shark. 

They still met up, in secret locations. Jules had set up an encrypted line of communication for them to send messages, but it wasn’t safe to talk on the phone. She missed Ocean joking while she worked on her experiments. She missed daydreaming about their future. But this was for the best. 

_ALERT! Foreign agent invading island. Location: Ghost agency FORTILLA._

She quickly pulled up the live footage. A man holding a large hammer was falling from the sky, heading straight towards the top of the Fortilla. At the moment of impact, the wood splintered, but the man stood up, miraculously unharmed. He was no ordinary invader. 

Jules didn’t even bother to turn off the monitor before jumping into a car and racing towards the Fortilla.

*****

“Who are you? Why have you summoned me here?” the impossibly muscled man demanded. 

“Buddy, I could ask you the same questions,” Ocean deadpanned. “Also, you just destroyed my top floor, do you have some kind of insurance?”

“I... don’t know what that means. But what is this place?”

“Is this some kind of tactic to get me to give up information? Because it’s not gonna work.”

The man brandished his… hammer? threateningly. “Tell me where I am.”

Ocean cocked her burst assault rifle. “Who sent you?”

“You dare threaten Thor, god of thunder?” He swung his weapon, and Ocean dashed out of the way, firing wildly with her gun. The Fortilla crumbled in the hammer’s wake, but Ocean didn’t have time to be angry. She ran outside, diving into the water and swimming for the mainland. 

A car squealed to a stop at the edge of the beach. She prayed it wasn’t an accomplice. “Are you okay?” someone asked worriedly. _Jules_?

“Yeah,” Ocean gasped. “Wait, what are you doing here?”

“I saw him crash through your roof and end up completely fine. There was no way he was just a regular rival agent.”

“He’s not with Shadow?”

“No. If he was, I’d have found a way to prevent him landing there.”

“He said he was a god of thunder. I’d say he’s nuts, but…” Ocean gestured towards the top floor of the Fortilla, completely destroyed. 

“I’m so sorry.” Jules put a comforting arm around Ocean’s shoulders. 

“It’s fine, I can always rebuild. But what do we do now?”

Jules reached back into the car and grabbed her drum gun. “Think we can take him together?”

Ocean grinned. “Let’s go.”

*****

The Fortilla’s alarms shrieked angrily. Henchmen were desperately shooting at Thor, who seemed unaffected by the bullets except that he was growing angrier. 

“Hey!” Ocean yelled. “You’ve got exactly one chance to tell me what the fuck you’re doing or we blow you sky-high.” Thor whipped around to face them. 

“I’d like to see you try, mortals. Tell me how you managed to bring me here from Asgard.”

Ocean looked at Jules questioningly. She shrugged and cocked her gun. 

Ocean fired the first shot, but soon the noises of the gunshots blended together into a cacophonous roar. They darted around Thor and his hammer, emptying round after round of bullets. But for every shot they landed, they missed more. Too many more. And Thor just wasn’t dying. 

“I’m almost out of ammo!” Jules shouted, narrowly avoiding a wide sweep of the hammer. 

“Me too!” Ocean yelled back. “We have to go!” She jumped over the remains of a table and towards the nearest exit, Jules hot on her heels. 

“Do you have any transport?” Jules asked, once they were clear of the building. 

“Not here, it’s on the other side, but we can’t…” Ocean trailed off. “Shit. We could try swimming around?”

Thor was making his way towards them. 

Suddenly they were both sprayed with water. “Tony Shark?” Jules asked incredulously. 

Thor stopped. “You know the Man of Iron?”

“Um… yes,” Ocean lied, trying to buy them time. Jules was clambering onto Tony Shark’s back. 

“Where is he?” Thor demanded. 

Ocean ignored him, climbing on behind Jules. “Okay, let’s go!” Tony Shark obliged, swimming quickly away from the Fortilla. Thor shouted something after them, but it was lost in the wind. 

Soon the island was nothing more than a pinprick in the distance. “I do _not_ envy the Ghost intel guy who has to try and figure out what just happened,” Jules mused. They both burst out laughing. 

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed! Let me know what you think in the comments!


End file.
